Category Archives: Perspective

Where is the Resistance?

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Resistance by Monika

The experience of resistance can be a very useful flag. But it’s important to look into it and see where it’s coming from. Is it within us or from around us? Where do we feel it? If an event arises in life and we have a strong and sustained reaction, we know there is an inner resistance and an emotional charge here to be resolved. For example, someone makes an off-hand comment that dismisses something important to us. Do we roll our eyes or flame up in anger and resentment? The latter shows a past experience is influencing our present. … Continue Reading… →

The Utah Talks – 2

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Lake Powell, Utah

< Talk 1 This talk started with a 10 min meditation that was not recorded. I start with a bit about listening from silent presence rather than the mind. As one participant said, they didn’t understand any of it but really enjoyed listening. (laughs) Theres a bit of breakup towards the end of this talk. Links to Topics: Doership Free Will and Determinism Natures Support Association of Spiritual Integrity The Humanity of a Teacher Right Action Wake Up, Grow up, Clean Up Dorothy Rowe Hypnosis Sanskrit vs English Name and Form Stages of Becoming The Structure of the World Cognition … Continue Reading… →

The Utah Talks – 1

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Salt Lake City

Traveling into Utah was a distinctive experience. The altitude is over 4,000 feet and the air dry. The plain by a salt lake is surrounded by large mountains. Salt Lake City has no apparent apartment towers and is spread wide. This is Mormon country. The entire county has streets and addresses laid out on a grid starting from the main temple. The group consciousness has a curious constraint and unsettledness. The talks took place in a private residence, about 2 dozen chairs spread through the living and dining rooms. Attendees were a very diverse group – in age, stage, background, … Continue Reading… →

The Humanity of a Teacher

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Humanity by Bryan Ledgard

I’ve written a few articles about modern issues with spiritual teachers. Students often see enlightenment as a superhuman perfection. We see the teacher as beyond mistakes. If a teacher buys into such ideas, they can create a large blind spot. Unresolved identity or unconscious needs are bound to be acted out with students. Expecting perfection, students may excuse the behaviour as “crazy wisdom” or similar. The Westernization of spiritual teaching has meant that most teachers are now independent, sometimes affiliated with a lineage and sometimes not. They’re often outside of any peer-support structure and often lack understanding of relationship power … Continue Reading… →

Nested Bliss

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Velvia Bliss by Taomeister

I’ve spoken before about nested space and about layers of bliss. The causal kosha is also known as the bliss body as we often experience it as a wave of bliss when we pass through it, as when transcending during meditation. But why then are there layers of bliss that can include massive increases and raptures? This comes back to nested spaces. We exist in a personal space, in the space of our family, in the space of our community, city, province, country, world, solar system, galaxy, galactic cluster, supercluster, unnamed region, and universe. At the event horizon of each … Continue Reading… →

Lokas and Patalas

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Kapaleeshwarar Temple by Vinoth Chandar

I’ve previously talked a little about lokas, mainly for the 2 versions of the Gayatri mantra. One describes a 3-worlds model of physical, subtle, and Divine. The other, a more detailed 7-worlds model with the physical, 3 progressively more subtle layers, and 3 heavens. Same arena divided in more detail. How many colours in a rainbow? Loka means place or world. The Vedas define lokas ranging from the physical world up into various heavens in the celestial realm. Essentially lokas are a type of nested sub-space. Just as the described koshas often stop with the causal, heavens are not usually … Continue Reading… →

Nested Dharma, Nested Karma

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Nest by Furtwangl

Down on the level of Buddhi, the intellect and intuition, the interactions of the fine devata create relationships. These structure the subtle or sacred geometry that defines the forms of our world. These subtle structures are composed of sutras or threads of light. We can describe them as structured flows of light, feeling, and sound. Those fine threads are sustained by tubes, like insulation on a wire. Flowing attention curves back on itself in a spiral down the thread, creating a tube. These tubes are embodied as subtle life-forms known as nagas. These are ancient and benevolent beings, quite different … Continue Reading… →

The Wisdom of No Escape

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pier

Susanne Marie writes occasional short articles she calls Reality Bites. I particularly enjoyed this one: “Sometimes the only way to be free of something is to allow yourself to be fully trapped. Our desire to escape suffering creates it’s own bondage. Most of us are initially drawn to spirituality with the understandable desire to feel better and in general to be released from suffering. But this desire in itself plays into the belief that something needs to be done about how we are feeling. That we need to somehow disappear a feeling by replacing it with bliss or peace, or … Continue Reading… →

How Does Infinity Become Lost in a Person?

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Sir Kenelm Digby

One of the more curious paradoxes of living life as a human is that we experience ourselves as limited, separate beings. It’s natural for separation to be part of our development. We have to recognize we’re separate from our mother to become a person, for example. And to recognize how we’re different from others to know what we have to offer. But once we know the platform for our life, it’s important to explore who it is that is having these experiences and return to our more universal nature. We’ll do this from a point value or specific perspective. We … Continue Reading… →

In the Big Picture

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Milky Way from Big Bend by Vincent Lock

If we see our lives as small and insignificant, we may be excused for spending it on escape. If we see our efforts at spiritual progress as temporary and with limited benefit, we can be excused for drifting away. But this is thinking small. I’ve mentioned before how Atman and Sattva, consciousness and clarity, are cumulative through lifetimes. Let’s look at this more closely. With the right practices and circumstances, we very much have the potential to awaken in this lifetime. Not everyone will shift, perhaps because of karmic backlog. But none of it is a waste. When the body … Continue Reading… →

Awakening Attitude

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Jack-Jack.

Recently, I saw an excellent article by John Welwood in Tricycle magazine called The Psychology of Awakening. Too often, awakening and psychological health are seen as different worlds even though they’re closely entwined. “…even among advanced spiritual practitioners, certain islands — unexamined complexes of personal and cultural conditioning, blind spots, or areas of self-deception — may often remain intact within the pure stream of their realization.” This is very true. They can remain unseen until events trigger them. Yet even then, if we see ourselves as separate from our humanity, we may excuse our bad behaviour or blame others. I’ve … Continue Reading… →

Ways of Seeing, Modes of Living

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stairs

The world around us can be perceived through several distinct lenses. Our past experiences certainly are a major influence, not to mention our dominant sense, our culture (group consciousness), our stage of development, and so forth. Through an appropriate spiritual practice that brings transcendence (Samadhi, Turiya), we not only touch into consciousness (presence) but we refine the physiology and our senses of perception. Refinement takes place through purification of the subtle layers of our physiology and a shift in the overall tone or dominant guna we carry. This combination refines our perceptual abilities. Each of us comes into this life … Continue Reading… →